1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method for promoting or advertising a product, brand, service or company and, specifically, to a method for fulfillment of a promotional contest.
2. Description of the Related Art
Products offered for sale are often promoted by contests or sweepstakes. The possibility of winning a prize in the contest brings the product or company to the attention of potential customers and may prompt them to purchase the product. Contests thereby increase sales of the product or other products of the company and related products of other manufacturers as customers are driven to participate in the contest. The contest may be conducted so as to require the participants to submit personal information to the company or to the contest promoter. This personal information is useful to the company or promoter in determining the demographics of the customer base.
A company or promoter conducting a contest to promote a product must provide so-called fulfillment for the contest. Fulfillment refers to receiving the contest entries, checking the entries to determine which of the entries are winners, and recording the personal information about the participants and statistical information on the contest itself. These tasks becomes quite burdensome, particularly if the fulfillment tasks are performed by the company since additional personnel are required to assume these duties. Separate companies are often hired for contest fulfillment. This represents a considerable expense to the company hoping to promote its product. These costs reduce the benefits of running the contest, namely increased profits from higher sales.
Fulfillment is also required for rebates offered upon the purchase of a product. The purchaser of the product may, for example, be required to send a copy of the sales receipt, a portion of the product package, and personal information to the company to receive a rebate payment to effectively reduce the purchase price of the product. The burden on a seller of a popular product to fulfill these rebate requests is great, often resulting in delays that frustrate and anger the purchasers of the product, which counteracts the benefits of the goodwill generated by the rebate offer.